Segment your offline & online competitors brainy

If you run business offline and online, it is very likely that your offline and online activities are integrated in a great measure.

Today we are speaking on a very slippery topic, which is not about emergence, or integration, or any other abstract marketing word.

Here we would like to point out some things regarding the confluence of offline and online competitor clusters and ways of analyzing them apart and altogether.

The original article contains three case studies and lots of tips and trick on competitors investigation and segmentation. Please read the full article here at our blog:
http://www.link-assistant.com/blog/online-offline-competitors/

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Case Study #1. Nike, or when yourpartners turn smarter than youThis SERP for the UKdoes not have anypages of thecompetitors listedabove.All of the sitesrepresented here areresellers.

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Case Study #1. Nike, or when yourpartners turn smarter than youFor this keyword nike.com results areon 28th position in google.com SERPand off the top 100 forgoogle.com.uk at the moment ofwriting this article.

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Case Study #1. Nike, or when yourpartners turn smarter than youWell, at a first glance it’s clear why:• Keywords? Are you serious?• No point in placing Nike Store UK at the beginning,it’s better to move relevant keywords closer to thebeginning• Auto generated meta tags

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Case Study #1. Nike, or when yourpartners turn smarter than youThat is how the product URL looks like:No sign of a user friendly URL.Not a big sin, but…

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Case Study #1. Nike, or when yourpartners turn smarter than youBut just imagine the amount of traffic andadditional online sales that could bebrought by SEO here, provided Nike canafford a lot – just look at their SMMcampaigns.

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Case Study #1. Nike, or when yourpartners turn smarter than youConclusion:In SERPs you have to competewith those who sell your goodsand services and not withbrands.

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The sooner the betterThe more you wait, themore efforts will beneeded to become astrong competitor.While you are thinkingwhether SEO is the rightchoice for you, your rivalsare overdoing you andconquering youraudience.

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Prices• Price building is different on the Web• You have to compete with your resellers• There are several resellers in SERP who sellshoes even cheaper than the Nike online store

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Steps to segment your competitors1) Set up a goal for your online marketing.2) Connect it to the goal of your offline marketing, ifany.3) Build a list of your offline competitors.4) Build a list of your online competitors.5) Find out which companies are in both lists (area 3in the picture above). Here you need an advancedresearch.6) Do a standard investigation of your only-onlinecompetitors.7) Pay attention to the possible keywords of youroffline competitors.

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Advanced online-offline competitorsresearch1) Compare the efforts they put in to offline and onlinemarketing.2) Do they have the same target audience online and offline?3) Do they do brand activities or sell online?4) What type of ads do they use?5) Are they successful? This is a vital question. It tells youwhat to do: to implement some of their strategy points or usethem as an example of wrong marketing activities.6) How deep is their online-offline integration? For example,how do they represent their offline campaigns on the Internet?7) How long are they online and offline? What have theyachieved through this period?

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Best practice for information gapImagine you would like to buy headphones. Youcan go to the store and try out some, comparehow they sound, choose those that fit your headbest. But the best way to compare the specificlists of features is to reach them online.Conclusion: provide exhaustive descriptions onthe website.

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Best practice for information gapCustomers can try on clothes at the shop, but awebsite picture of the jacket itself provides poorinformation.Conclusion: upload pictures of the models wearingclothes in different positions, indoor and outdoor.Make HQ zoomed pictures for showing details ofthe item, provide an advanced size chart.

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Best practice for information gapA shop assistant at your store may help yourcustomers to choose a PC mainly for graphicdesign software usage. How can they define asuitable PC on a website?Conclusion: provide suggestions (This PC is thebest solution for game players) or arrangeonline consultation via Skype, online chat etc.

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Useful readingThe list of points that add to this customerinformation gap is huge and it influences e-commerce if compared with offline salesaccording to the Online vs OfflineCompetition part for the Oxford Handbookof the Digital Economy.

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I have no friendsand no enemies -only competitors.Aristotle Onassis